Question

Why does this work:

    //split returns (char**)
    char *temp2;
    temp2=split(array[i],'=')[1];

and this doesn’t:

char **temps;
temps[0]=temp2; //crashes

or this:

temps[0]=split(array[i],'=')[1]; //crashes

Answer 1

temps is just a pointer to a char*, but it has no initalized, sensible value! temps[0] is equivalent to *(temps + 0), but you cannot dereference a garbage value — you first have to make temps points somewhere useful, e.g. by allocating memory for it.

If you want to store some char*s with automatic storage, then declare an array of char pointers instead:

char * temps[20];
temps[0] = /*... etc. ...*/